You Are Dumb, which is not a blog, posts new columns when it can manage to in these troubled Trumpian times. It is also a Twitter feed, @youaredumb, with content in a similar vein but much shorter. For a take on what a blog by me would be like, check out OLDNERD.

I know that, given the nature of the modern news cycle, we’ve all pretty much moved on from the saga of Ronny Jackson’s failed bid to run the Veterans Administration, but since I was laid up most of the last week with food poisoning, and this whole drama was to responsible governing what food poisoning is to normal eliminatory processes, I think it’s worth revisiting.

If you don’t remember how we got here, Ronny Jackson has been the chief physician to the last three presidents, but nobody cared until it was time to give Trump a physical, because of reports and visual evidence that Trump’s diet is basically that of a very wealthy man with no taste that nobody is willing to say “no” to. Plus, he evaluated Trump’s mental status, and to the surprise of many, Trump can identify a hippopotamus. To the surprise of nobody, Trump took this as proof that he’s very smart.

So, Ronny Jackson gave a long press conference where he answered everyone’s questions without accidentally calling for the genocide of any minority groups, and rained praise on Trump’s genetic makeup the entire time. So of course, Trump was impressed. So impressed that when Trump’s first pick to run the VA, David Shulkin, balked at turning the health care of America’s veterans over to private industry to pillage for profits, Trump found ethical lapses (since he was a Trump appointee, there were plenty), fired him, and nominated Jackson to replace him, by many accounts without consulting anyone ever.

So of course, last week, a variety of reports surfaced that Jackson was a booziing, shouty asshole with a very loose hand with prescription meds, including Percoset. It is absolutely the kind of thing you could get away with under three presidents if nobody pays any attention to you. But one thing Trump does is make absolutely sure people pay attention to you. It took a surprising number of days, given that Jackson started from a position of having zero qualifications, but he eventually withdrew his nomination and also quit as Trump’s physician. Which means all that’s left is the release of his memoir, “A ‘Higher’ Loyalty, Get It?”

This would normally be the end of it, but you see, Donald Trump is president, and the system kept Donald Trump from getting what he wanted, and so someone has to pay. Trump’s decided that will be Jon Tester, the Montana Democrat who, along with his Republican counterpart, released the details of the allegations that sunk Jackson’s career. Political irrationality is a feature, not a bug, so Trump has seized on a minor debunking of one aspect of one charge against Jackson to declare COMPLETE EXONERATION in a way that sounds very familiar to anyone following the Russia investigation, and spent his Michigan rally making the kind of vague threats that we all know by now means he can’t do shit but wants to seem tough.